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Thursday, February 26, 2015

Twisted Fate by Norah Olson

I'm already behind on the 2015 DAC challenge! I missed January - I'll catch up but I wanted to be sure that I didn't fall any further behind for February. So here's my first DAC challenge title for 2015, squeezing in just before February ends :)

Allyson and Sydney couldn't be more different. In fact, the Tate sisters are almost polar opposites. So it makes sense that when Graham Copeland moves to the neighborhood, they're reactions to him would be different. Allyson is immediately drawn to him - he's a bit shy and artsy, and she quickly finds herself becoming very close to the boy. Sydney on the other hand is quickly turned off by Graham's quirkiness. For one, he seems to be on something almost all the time. For another, his habit of filming everything, while somewhat intriguing, is also a bit annoying. Plus, Sydney is sure that Graham is hiding something. She's convinced he's bad news for Allyson, but she can't put her finger on exactly why that might be. And she can't seem to get Allyson to stay away from him.

Right off the bat I should say that I didn't love Twisted Fate, but I didn't dislike it either. I'm in the middle.

I thought the author did an overall decent job of putting together such a clever read but there were parts that I felt were quite underdeveloped. For one, the book is split into multiple viewpoints, offering varying perspectives on the characters and occurrences of the story. But with this formatting I never really got a sense of exactly what was wrong with Graham and I felt like everyone around him was pretty wishy washy where he was concerned. Sydney and Allyson were particularly problematic in this area: the relationship between Allyson and Graham felt very thin and Sydney seemed to spend more time with Graham than not - in direct conflict with her comments about how much she can't stand him.

I also wanted the relationship between Allyson and Sydney to be focused on more than it was. Their interplay was the best part of the story and it could be that in featuring their particular interactions more the author may have been afraid of giving too much away too early. I don't know, I figured it all out fairly quickly so I can't say.

Overall the interactions between all of the characters really could have been beefed up in a way to provide more context and more depth without spilling the beans on Graham's secret or even Allyson and Sydney's story.

I will say this, though, what the author was trying to accomplish is tough and (as I mentioned above) she does do a pretty good job of it overall.